Read it and drink, a guide to pore over

HOW TO DRINK BY VICTORIA MOORE (Granta, £15.99)

The definition of 'beverage', according to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, is:
'From the Latin bibere. Drink, esp. a liquor which is in common use.'

All sorts
of people have found themselves from time to time inspired to write books about
various kinds of beverage - there are books about tea, coffee, cocktails, wine
(Lord! The quantity of books there are about wine).

You are what you drink: Victoria Moore preparing a fruit smoothie drink

People have written
interminably about whisky (a spirit the main property of which seems to be that
it strikes its consumers with a dire case of virulent adjectivitis) and with
remorse about gin. No doubt if one were to search the stacks of the Bodleian
Library one would find there learned treatises on mescal, absinthe, blue curacao
and Parfait Amour.

But now Victoria Moore has had an idea of inspired
simplicity. How To Drink is a book about the liquids human beings tip down their
throats in all their many guises, from the elemental (tea, coffee) and the
soothing (hot chocolate, egg-nog), to the sophisticated (martinis), the
unexpectedly complex (kir, and its superiority to kir royale) and the frankly
silly (Fuzzy Navel, anyone?).

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Here she is on the subject of the first
Pimm's of the year: 'The first day when you can smell spring and the sun shines
unexpectedly hot, despite the stillwatery light, is the first Pimm's day of the
year and on it nothing will seem more intoxicating than the fruity, sweet,
slightly woody, orange-peel scent of Pimm's No. 1 poured into a tall glass,
mixed with cheap lemonade and topped with a sprig of mint and slice of cucumber
...

'But here is the bad news. Unless you are a committed Pimm's fan, the
first time you drink Pimm's each year is also the only day on which it will meet
expectations. After that, it's all downhill... pleasure decreases
exponentially until what began as a glowing glass full of promise becomes a
sickly confection no more moreish than an old piece of bubblegum. I only drink
it once a year.'

This passage tells you all you need to know about Moore and her
book. The pair of them are clever, trenchant, knowledgeable, imaginative,
opinionated to the point of bossiness, with a palate of restless, not to say
surreal, sensitivity.

Our sense of taste is inextricably linked to the
sense of smell which is, in turn, directly coupled with memory and
emotion.

So to write well about food or drink requires the vocabulary and
narrative skill of a novelist, which explains why the literary productions of so
many fair-to-middling cooks or oenophiles are as unpleasant to read as
fair-to-middling fiction.

If Moore were a beverage, one would note her
astringent top notes, vibrant colour and complex finish. The purpose of her book
is vividly didactic. She wants us all to drink better, whether our tipple is a
nice cup of tea, a covert nip of sloe gin in the kitchen when no one is looking,
or a cool glass of wine.

She is well informed on what my wine merchant
calls the 'much misunderstood' Aligote grape. But then she is well informed on
every subject.

For example, the gathering of elderflowers for cordial:
'There is an old association with the Devil - traditionally elder wood was never
thrown on the fire because burning it was said to conjure up Beelzebub' - to the
drinking of vodka: 'The writer Vitali Vitaliev said that if no pickles were
available [to mask the taste of the spirit] it would be acceptable to pick up a
scraggy alley cat and bury your nose in its matted fur instead.'

And not just
well informed, but well connected: 'I use a recipe [for White Lady] passed on to
me by the Right-wing commentator Simon Heffer,' she writes, 'who in turn got it
from the Conservative minister Ian Gow, who was killed by an IRA car bomb in
1990.'Henceforth, I shall make my White Ladies to no other
formula. Unless, that is, I should be tempted by the recipe that follows
it in the book, for White Lady without egg white, which Moore received from
'Petronella Wyatt, who got it from the Countess of Wilton, a famed beauty who in
her youth worked for Errol Flynn'.

If this sounds too precious to bear,
don't worry. Moore is nothing if not eclectic and the volatile note of
snobbishness is nicely undercut by possibly the most revolting recipe for sherry
trifle I have ever encountered, involving packet trifle sponge, packet pink
blancmange and a pint of custard, made by 'following the instructions on the
tin'.

This confection was passed down to Moore from her dear old gran.
The act of grand-filial piety explains and excuses everything.

Its
inclusion among the fastidious recipes for frozen daiquiris and the learned
discourse on the qualities of demi-sec champagne is characteristic of this
handsome, useful and engaging book.